I’ve been a crime fiction addict for years, but my very first love was horror. Luckily for me and so many other grateful readers, there are plenty of fabulously frightening authors, like Hjortsberg, Gruber, Connelly, Beukes, and of course Mr King, who seamlessly blend both genres … | Continue reading
Minnesota is having something of a moment. Ever since Vice President Harris chose Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate, Americans from coast to coast have turned our attention to the North Star State, from considering Minnesota’s free breakfast and lunch program as a m … | Continue reading
There’s a scene in Bram Stoker’s brilliant novel Dracula that perfectly sums up the narrative’s treatment of beautiful, doomed Lucy Westenra. It’s meant to be lighthearted; just a funny anecdote written by a charming young woman to her dear friend about the day three different me … | Continue reading
I grew up loving mysteries—I can still picture those yellow-spined Nancy Drew books that were integral to my childhood—but it wasn’t until much later that I began reading thrillers. There’s something so delicious about picking up a book that mashes together fast pacing, an intrig … | Continue reading
When it comes to juicy source material for crime fiction, you can’t go wrong with the Bible. It’s got betrayal, duplicity, incest, political intrigue, racism and murder both mass and singular. And this is where Silvia Moreno-Garcia found inspiration for The Seventh Veil of Salome … | Continue reading
“This is the skin of a killer, Bella.” I’ve got to be honest; this line has been quoted to me an astonishing number of times over the last few months. Not at random, thankfully, but when I bring up the fact that I wrote a vampire novel. Twilight’s sparkly shadow looms large. It w … | Continue reading
“Do you believe in ghosts?” Though I’ve long been fascinated by ghost stories and the possibilities they suggest–mainly, that death might not completely quiet us, for good or for ill–I’ve never felt comfortable answering this question with an unreserved “Yes.” This question resur … | Continue reading
The despairing silence was broken. There was someone at the front door, knocking loudly. Helgi got to his feet. He had been sitting on the sofa with a detective novel, trying to calm himself down before bed by losing himself in a fictional world, but now the peace was over. He an … | Continue reading
Recently, a friend and fellow writer asked me to give him some advice for how to write a mystery novel. I offered him craft books and a template that I use to teach my own classes before catching myself in a realization. “If you really want to study how a mystery is put together, … | Continue reading
Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Susan Stokes-Chapman, The Shadow Key (Harper) “An engaging work of historical fiction that is a love letter to Welsh culture as well as a gripping and atmospheric mystery pitting scientific reason aga … | Continue reading
In the new Nick Mason book (An Honorable Assassin), Mason finds himself on the other side of the world, ruthlessly hunting down a target so that he can assassinate him. One of Mason’s teammates, a hardened French assassin named Luna, has this exchange with him as they wait to be … | Continue reading
The first bubble burst almost twenty years ago. Our house in a bucolic college town in western Massachusetts was vandalized and robbed while we were away on a family holiday. It wasn’t your classic teenage break-in party, but something more sinister. The destruction was wanton, o … | Continue reading
I guess it’s quiz season, because I can’t stop making quizzes. By that, do I mean that it’s quiz season so I’m making quizzes, or I’m making quizzes so it’s quiz season? I don’t know, but the finer points don’t really matter. What only matters is: quiz. This particular quiz conce … | Continue reading
I fell in love with Gothic fiction while teaching a night course in Gothic literature at a Midwestern college. It was winter and my drive was long and sometimes treacherous, traversing dimly lit, snow-covered roads. The journey seemed apropos of Gothic fiction’s dark themes, eeri … | Continue reading
On 14 June, prompted by the Good fiasco, Commissioners Mayne and Rowan sent to the Home Secretary a ‘Memorandum relative to the Detective Powers of the Police’. It laid out plans for a new branch of Scotland Yard comprised of two detective-inspectors and eight sergeants. The docu … | Continue reading
When asked to think about the horror genre, most people would conjure the image of teenagers being victimized in some way. Maybe it’s by a vengeful killer at a summer camp, or a crazed man with a chainsaw or a demon they’ve made the mistake of summoning via Ouija board. Regardles … | Continue reading
It always starts the same way. The reality show host drives toward their destination in Smalltown, USA, discussing the details of the house and its owners. We, the viewers, are shown the exterior: majestic, imposing, possibly in a state of disrepair. We meet the owners, who tell … | Continue reading
Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is itself a strange case. The fact that its initial success as a ‘shilling shocker’ was due to its thrilling conclusion is difficult to appreciate nowadays, given that the ‘punchline’ is known to all. The … | Continue reading
If Dudley Clarke had done nothing else in the war, his final job in London in 1940 would have secured him a place in history. On his return from Ireland he’d been appointed as military assistant to Sir John Dill, the new Chief of the Imperial General Staff. Dill and Clarke were ol … | Continue reading
I met Adam West in the summer of 2008, at a fundraising gala on the North Shore of Long Island to which my parents had managed to snag tickets for our family of four. The event was being hosted by a local historic institution, celebrating a mammoth anniversary with a benefit to r … | Continue reading
We all know the scene: at the end of the story, when the body count is out of control, the one girl left alive stands up against the monster and delivers a defiant, badass one-liner. These are the Final Girls—the ones who live. Everyone wants to be a Final Girl, because what’s th … | Continue reading
“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.” — Antonio Gramsci The diminutive Italian philosopher was only partly right. Our world as we’ve understood it is, indeed, dying, and a new world will soon emerge. But monsters don’t sudd … | Continue reading
I’d only been working for the British government for a few days when I met my first spy. My new job was counter-terrorism communications, so I’d already had my background thoroughly checked before I ever stepped foot through the secure glass doors, and I’d thought that part was o … | Continue reading
Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Kristin Pérez, The Many Lies of Veronica Hawkins (Pegasus) “A must-read that’s dark, disturbing, and suspenseful while also being a compelling story about identity, deception, and ambition.” –Booklist … | Continue reading
As if gazing into a crystal ball—and through the prism of Ranger Darren Mathews’ battle against The Brotherhood’s murderous reign—Attica foresaw how the political climate would embolden white supremacy groups and how that would play out for a Black man with a badge and a gun. Dar … | Continue reading
Perusing a mystery shelf in your local bookstore, you may have wondered—just how many thriller subgenres are out there? You have medical thrillers, psychological thrillers, domestic suspense thrillers, spy thrillers, procedural thrillers, amateur sleuth thrillers, action thriller … | Continue reading
When most people think of gothic fiction, they envision a heroine dashing through a crumbling manor in middle of nowhere England, chased by the ghosts of her lover’s past, one as rife with secrets as the holes in her moth-eaten gown. 19th and 20th century classics such as Bronte’ … | Continue reading
There’s nothing… nothing… more satisfying than when a movie has a perfect tagline. Take A Nightmare on Elm Street’s ““If Nancy doesn’t wake up screaming, she won’t wake up at all.” After all, a good tagline ought to be more than either wordplay or a plot synopsis delivery system. … | Continue reading
If the reading and writing world(s) of Eli Cranor could be distilled into one word, it would probably be: empathy. The “beautiful simplicity of a single word”—albeit laden with subtext—is evidenced by the title Broiler (July 2, 2024; Soho Press). The nationally bestselling author … | Continue reading
A look at the month’s best reviewed crime, mystery, and thriller books, from Book Marks. Morgan Richter, The Divide (Knopf) “Ms. Richter’s novel starts as an offbeat mystery and turns into an emotional tour de force. The redoubtable Jenny strives to redeem her disappointing life … | Continue reading
We have a complicated relationship with fear. On one hand, we avoid many of its causes at all costs, warned from a young age what can hurt us and, more importantly, how to steer clear. On the other hand, we can’t help ourselves, so fascinated by things that go bump in the night t … | Continue reading
A crime has occurred in the heart of old Europe. Technically some guy was killed, but the real crime might be the new German-made TV show Miss Merkel, where (and I kid you not) the former German chancellor Angela Merkel passes her well-earned retirement solving crimes. It’s cosy, … | Continue reading
I don’t know why I started watching Dexter, but I did, and now I’m done. Thanks to streaming, I squished eight years of prestige television into exactly two months. It’s always a bit strange to watch something for the first time at a greater advantage than the pioneers who watche … | Continue reading
As an editor for this website, I’ve always enjoyed using my platform for my petty and deeply arbitrary antipathies, including my hatred of lakes and summer camps, and along those lines: cabins, also not so great. They can be, in fact, very creepy. And sometimes, they have daddy l … | Continue reading
Though I haven’t lived in New York City in a decade, its grit is in my blood and memories, always making its way into my essays and fictions. Nonetheless, after the malling and gentrification of the Big Apple many believed that the metropolis would be safer, but according to the … | Continue reading
Having devoured suspense in all its forms since childhood, there was never any doubt it was the genre I would find myself writing in, when I first began penning novels. Just like other thrill-seekers, I have been enthralled by horror-tinged literature and movies about serial kill … | Continue reading
Nancie Clare Les is definitely driving this bus. Leslie Klinger Nick and I have been friends for a long, long time. I met him back in The Seven-Per-Cent-Solution days, a really exciting times for Sherlockians because Nick, almost single-handedly, brought Holmes out of retirement. … | Continue reading
We’ve all lived through those turbulent years of adolescence. The joy, the pain, first love, the zits, the crushes, the insecurity, the tears and the laughter, and those chaotic years have provided no shortage of subject matter for many classic novels and memoirs like The Catcher … | Continue reading
Maybe it’s the loam in the air, the low-slung clouds, like a curtained ceiling, the promise of a good strong brew (Yorkshire and Welsh Gold are good choices), the frequent, but innocent grumbles over the weather, or the way we respect a queue. There’s something to be said for the … | Continue reading
Grieving over seemingly unrelated tragedies, Amy begins to believe that not only there is a sinister connection that links the deaths, but if she cannot untangle the mysterious urban legend known as the Rule of Three she will be the next person to die. However, when Amy cannot be … | Continue reading
Dorothy L. Sayers wrote The Five Red Herrings in 1930, at the height of the Golden Age of detective fiction. Yet the book novel (published at the start of the following year and originally known in the United States as Suspicious Characters) stands apart from her other mysteries … | Continue reading
“We’ve traced the call, it’s coming from inside the house.” Has ever a line been more chilling? Coming towards the end of twenty-plus minutes of excruciating suspense at the opening to the 1979 movie WHEN A STRANGER CALLS, this classic piece of dialogue, delivered over the phone … | Continue reading
It is perhaps unsurprising that women journalists loom large in my books – I spent more than thirty years as one, reporting on major crimes, interviewing the ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances, and skidding up to deadlines. But, to be honest, I hadn’t planne … | Continue reading
“Pray you now, forget and forgive,” King Lear says in Act IV, scene VIII. But more importantly, an unfortunately less quoted, right after that, he adds, “I am old and foolish.” The Bard warned us, but we did not listen. So now, half a millennium later, people believe that they sh … | Continue reading
Oliver Stone’s mesmerizingly gaudy tale of criminal lovers Mickey and Mallory Knox carving a trail of death and destruction across America’s arid Southwest, became a cause célèbre, upon release in August 1994. In the US, Great Britain and France, the press played armchair shrinks … | Continue reading
I spend a lot of time thinking about travel. For me, maps and guidebooks are as addictive and indulgent as trashy magazines were in the days before smartphones, and an ever-shifting bucket list lives rent free in my head. I’m also obsessed with scary stories. Horror films, thrill … | Continue reading
Another week, another batch of books for your TBR pile. Happy reading, folks. * Nicholas Meyer, Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell (Mysterious Press) “Nicholas Meyer’s stirring tale of the turning point of the Great War reveals the pivotal roles of Sherlock Holmes and his … | Continue reading
Philadelphia – Philly, the City of Brotherly Love, the start of Route 66 – biggest city in Pennsylvania and the sixth biggest city in the USA with over 6 million inhabitants. Founded on principles of religious freedom and an occasional capital of these here United States. And, of … | Continue reading